Noragami starts off very, very strongly, with a little wisdom and a lot of polish

I hate to sound like an embittered loser who has had no luck with women, but every fiber of my manly heart cried out with recognition at the scene illustrated above.

There is at least a little bit of wisdom in the first episode of Noragami, and it is this: When you’re a young man, a lot of times, you’ll pick up a girl and then lose her right away, and you’ll try to say something cool to distract yourself from her contempt. You’ll try to say something like, “You’ll come crawling back to me when I make it big!”

And then there is some incredibly unrealistic foolishness, like the way that the young man almost immediately picks up a better girl. But, hey, this is televised escapism, so we can forgive it for being excessively optimistic.

Many aspects of the first episode, especially visual images like the one below, remind me of Ao No Exorcist :

The first episode manages to hit a lot of genuinely emotional notes: the opening is truly creepy, the heroic entrance is suitably grandiloquent, and the heroine combines ojou-sama rich-girl-style with girl-next-door charm.

If nothing else, I predict this show will be highly polished and skillfully delivered. If it turns out to have lasting artistic merit, that’s just icing on the cake.